Letter #141: Doubt

Good morning, Erin.

In case you weren’t aware, Netflix has already started to flood with Christmas movies—including one about Chad Michael Murray becoming a stripper in a small town.

Don’t say ya boy ain’t never done nothin’ for ya.

Unless…you think that sounds too good to be true. Like maybe I made it up. Like maybe I just took two things I remember you saying (that you like to watch bad Christmas movies and thought Tristan on Gilmore Girls was hot) and combined them into a lie too tempting for your heart not to skip a beat over it. 

Of course, you could easily check to see what the truth is—but have you considered how your doubt would make me feel???

…b-because that’s a running consideration of today’s subject, the 10-episode homicide thriller, Doubt. Obviously, you should verify anything I say that sounds at all fishy to you. That’s just sensible. I mean, I trust you implicitly, but I wouldn’t be offended to know I’m still on the skepticism list. I mean, how often have I told you my instincts are terrible? 

The Chad Michael Murray thing is totally real, though. The Merry Gentlemen. Out November 20th.

[definitely isn’t waiting to see if you believe him]

A-Anyway…let’s get into the newly wrapped-up series, Doubt, which we’ll talk about mostly spoiler free, because (spoiler alert) it’s pretty okay, and I wouldn’t want to ruin it for you, if you want to watch it. 

…unless you think I’m lying, of course.

Only one way to find out:

1. If you’re wondering whether I chose to watch this show because I’ve ben in the mood for thrillers, lately, or because it stars the cute crazy “daughter”/sidekick from Sweet Home 2 + 3…w-well, y’know, isn’t it nice to, um, to keep a little bit of mystery in a relationship? 

2. But, uh, speaking of people I recognized: 

• the crazy “daughter”/sidekick from Sweet Home 2 + 3 as Ha-bin, the highly suspicious daughter

• the dad from My Name as the captain of the homicide detectives

• IU’s grandmother from My Mister as Ha-bin’s grandmother

• the scarred-up military leader from Sweet Home 2 + 3 as a criminal (mini-reunion! Woo!)

2A. …actually I don’t remember if those two ever meet up in Sweet Home 2 + 3. Hmm. Whatever. 

3. So, the pitch for Doubt is that a preeminent police profiler grapples with his belief that his daughter is the murderer in the last case he’s working in the days before he transfers to another city. It’s a tense thriller that promises a game of cat-and-mouse as well as tons of twists and misdirection (or are they???). Which is why I didn’t blink twice when the poster for the show was:

…by which I mean I was STUNNED to find out this was a poster for the show. Because the first version of it that I’d seen was:

Dark colors, antagonistic positions, it’s the family kitchen but it’s framed to look like an interrogation room—classic detective thriller stuff, right? You know what you’re in for and whether it’s something you’d be interested in. But that first image…? I haven’t done any research about why it was a poster (like, maybe there’s an ironic message written on it that I can’t read which gives it a dark feel despite the image itself), but when I saw it had taken the place of the second one when I went to watch a new episodes, I had to double check that I wasn’t on the wrong show. (And just to make clear: the obvious “thriller” poster is the more accurate portrayal of the show.)

4. To wit: this show is almost obsessively cliche in its cinematography, utilizing the long tracking shots, slow zooms down endless gloomy hallways, and locked camera on a character’s back as he or she walks from one place to another of every “artsy” detective thriller since Nordic noir hit mainstream popularity. But it’s done almost to the point of parody, in my opinion, since the show rarely seems to use it for effect rather than because that's just how all the cool, moody thrillers are shot, nowadays. It’s slick and stuff, at first, but I eventually found it quite silly—particularly when the plot would slow down more than necessary just because we wanted to make sure we watched the protagonist enter his home and walk slowly down every hallway in the house to then stand in his bedroom for “character” reasons. 

4A. That said, there are certainly times when this show looks very TV. And it’s kind of jarring to see the two styles right next to each other. Not a dealbreaker by any means, but…still.

5. Relatedly: they could not have made the house that the protagonist and his daughter live in look any more like it was straight out of a horror film. It’s made almost entirely out of dark wood hallways that are constantly cast in shadow. I was waiting for someone to turn a corner and find a set of creepy, unblinking twins staring at him. 

6. I liked the music. It wasn’t particularly special (which I don’t say to knock the score), and what I liked about it isn’t at all special, but…I enjoyed how the main theme was frequently brought back and reworked to amplify the tension of one moment or the other. 

6A. I’m willing to bet you’d know better than I would, but…the whole thing is played with strings, and I think the main driver is the cello. Which I mention because I apparently took a fair amount of time to write it down in my notes. For some reason.

7. The girl playing Ha-bin (the daughter who may or may not be a murderer) does a really effective job being, well, a psychopath. I’ve seen a handful of these kinds of characters in the last year, but the ones worth discussing have all been different, from the soulless sociopathy of the girl from Pyramid Game to the unhinged glee of Eighth Floor from The 8 Show to the absolutely electric lunacy of the woman from The Frog. And I’m happy to say that Ha-bin is yet another worthwhile addition to this list, being simultaneously frighteningly inhuman but also clearly deeply engaged with the world around her—that is, you could see there was something behind her eyes, no matter how cold and uncaring. The character isn’t quite interesting enough for the actress to sear herself into our minds like Go Min-si in The Frog, but I’d say she brought a good deal of nuance to a character that is, essentially, totally deadpan. I’m hoping this earns her some good buzz and lands her a few more roles. 

8. …which, in point of fact, is not a spoiler. It’s not only immediately obvious that Ha-bin is…um, not like everyone else, but it’s also a key feature of the plot: the profiler father is very much aware of how readily his daughter could become the target of one of his investigations. So, this is very much one of the first things you learn. 

9. Also: it was killing me that her name was “Ha-bin,” given that the only other person I know with that name was the weird dude on Single’s Inferno 3 that none of the women liked. 

10. Without giving anything away, I’d like to point out that a character makes a mistake that he would not have made if he’d watched Death Note. Just sayin’.

11. There’s a brilliant moment in a car chase scene where the edit lingers a bit longer than it should, and you can see the car that’s supposed to be driving away at top speed has come to a complete stop—because the actor has clearly driven as far as he’s supposed to for the shot before they have to go back and do another take. Which made me laugh. 

12. There’s also a silly TV-show “I’m secretly tailing you!” sequence where the protagonist is following a suspect in his car through a long stretch of empty streets in the middle of the night from about 10 feet away with his headlights glaring. It wasn’t quite as ridiculous as in Squid Game—if only by virtue of not involving a super-secret criminal enterprise that’s somehow incapable of using rearview mirrors over the course of several hours on an abandoned highway. 

13. Doubt is not subtle with its themes and symbolism. For example…remember the poster that has the father and daughter framed like they’re in an interrogation room, even though they’re just in their kitchen? Well, that shot is used in almost every episode—and it’s held for a good, long while so that you really, really, REALLY understand what they’re trying to do. In case you didn’t catch on. To the fact that it’s like you’re looking at an interrogation room through the two-way mirror. 

13A. Or, as another example, did you know that a theme for this show is…doubt? Did you? Because there’s a theme about doubt. THERE ARE 100 INSTANCES OF SOMEONE DOUBTING SOMETHING ABOUT SOMEONE OR SOMETHING AND THEN MAYBE DOUBTING WHETHER THEY DOUBT IT DO YOU GET IT HUH HUH DO YA THE THEME IS ABOUT DOUBT AND WHAT IT DOES TO PEOPLE DO YOU GET IT?!?!?!

14. For most of the show, the protagonist is secretly working parallel to the rest of the cops investigating the murder, trying to work out if his daughter is involved or not while trying to keep her off of their radar as long as possible. For this to work, the show frequently seems to keep the other cops in narrative stasis if they are not on screen. That is, it’s as if these characters only do things if we’re looking at them, so they don’t even make any kind of progress while the protagonist is off having his own detective adventures. Which sure is helpful. 

15. So, while the show is overall a good watch, it indisputably becomes more and more convoluted with each progressive episode—for a variety of reasons, whether they be about facilitating twists or allowing for plot beats that have to be handwaved into existence or intentional misdirects that they’d prefer you not remember anymore because they’ve just been left dangling after they served their purpose in distracting you. Some of them are easy enough to ignore, but some of them left me crossing my arms and pouting by the end of the series and seriously hurt my opinion of the show. (Which is why I say it’s pretty okay and not pretty good.) And so, I’d like to leave you with a completely encoded (and therefore non-spoiler) list of the things I have repeated “Hang on, what about…???” notes for:

• Are you really not going to show us this?

• But the suitcase!

• Did you do that, or…was it just a coincidence?

• But but but why are you covered in blood???

• H-How did he end up with you???

• Um, why did we need you?

• Are you really not going to show us this?!

• So…when did you do that?

• BUT WHY ARE YOU COVERED IN BLOOD?!

…and I think that will do for now. 

As I said: it’s certainly worth watching, if you’re in the mood for a detective thriller. I don’t think it’ll forever change your list of favorite shows, but it’s better than a lot of what you’d get from Netflix thrillers. 

Oo—and look at that: according to this YouTube video I watched at lunch, TXT is making its comeback in a couple of weeks. Man, it is just win after win for my seonbae. 

Meanwhile, I’ve got the second half of Mr. Plankton to finish. 

…

Or maybe I’ll just clean my bathtub. 

Enjoy your Chad Michael Murray time. 

More soon.

—Daryl